The blockbuster action movie Clint Eastwood was surprisingly open to making: “Maybe I’ll direct”
While he’s acted in and directed plenty of movies that have action in them, Clint Eastwood has neither headlined nor helmed a blockbuster action flick in the conventional sense: as in, something with a massive budget, oodles of CGI, and a sky-high body count that leaves blood sprayed across the screen.
It hasn’t been for a lack of trying on Hollywood’s part, though, with Eastwood either sought or considered for countless explosive extravaganzas. He was one of the countless names who turned their noses up at Die Hard before Bruce Willis snagged his career-defining role as John McClane, and he was among the first names on the wish list when the long-gestating Gemini Man entered development in the late 1990s.
The four-time Academy Award winner also scoffed at the concept of suiting up as Superman in Richard Donner’s 1978 comic book adaptation, wasn’t interested in being the first American actor to embody James Bond, and rejected the part in Men in Black that was eventually, and memorably, filled by Tommy Lee Jones.
As the industry evolved and placed more focus on scope, scale, and spectacle at the expense of storytelling, it became increasingly unlikely that Eastwood would ever dip his toes into those waters. Fortunately, his action hero credentials were already impeccable, as the likes of Dirty Harry, the Dollars trilogy, The Outlaw Josey Wales, In the Line of Fire, and Escape from Alcatraz had shown.
However, when an entire franchise was conceived, marketed, and sold on the back of gathering together as many ageing icons as possible and parachuting them into a flimsy plot that only existed as an excuse for them to trade cringeworthy quips and mow down reams of faceless henchmen, it was only inevitable that his name would come up eventually.
Across the first two instalments, Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables roped in Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Chuck Norris. Having earned almost $400 million in the process, producer Avi Lerner set his sights even higher for the threequel.
“We’ve approached Clint Eastwood to be one of the guys,” he revealed per The Hollywood Reporter. “We’ve got a character in mind for him.” Obviously, that never happened, with Harrison Ford and Wesley Snipes being drafted in to tick the gun-toting veteran box and be welcomed into the Expendables fold.
It’s highly unlikely that Eastwood entertained the offer for very long, although he did tease that he’d be interested in calling the shots from the other side of the camera, even if his tongue was probably ready to burst out from the inside of his cheek.
“Probably not,” he responded when asked if he’d be the latest on-camera addition to the roster. “I haven’t had the opportunity to see it yet. I haven’t read any material. I’m probably more apt to direct something. Maybe I’ll direct Expendables 3.”
Somewhere in an alternate universe, there’s a version of The Expendables 3 that Clint Eastwood directed. It would be a head-scratching change of pace for the filmmaker, but it’d be a damn sight better than the watered down, PG-13 rated version that was released, underperformed at the box office, made Stallone admit he’d dropped the ball, won a Razzie from three nominations, and killed the franchise for a decade.
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